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Börsenbetreiber zeigt sich skeptisch und will prüfen, ob noch ein “fairer” Markt gegeben ist. Trotz Bedenken stimmte die Bundesregierung zu. Was ab Februar gelten soll.
The results and analysis for DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray sales for the week ending November 26, 2022, are in. It’s Black Friday Week – will we have a great sale, or a not so great one? Find out more in our weekly DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray…
The results and analysis for DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray sales for the week ending November 26, 2022, are in. It's Black Friday Week - will we have a great sale, or a not so great one? Find out more in our weekly DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray sales stats and analysis feature.
More than a dozen attacks allegedly logged in a single week.
Federal prosecutors have charged two men with allegedly taking part in a spree of swatting attacks against more than a dozen owners of compromised Ring home security cameras and using that access to livestream the police response on social media.
Kya Christian Nelson, 21, of Racine, Wisconsin, and James Thomas Andrew McCarty, 20, of Charlotte, North Carolina, gained access to 12 Ring cameras after compromising the Yahoo Mail accounts of each owner, prosecutors alleged in an indictment filed Friday in the Central District of California. In a single week starting on November 7, 2020, prosecutors said, the men placed hoax emergency calls to the local police departments of each owner that were intended to draw an armed response, a crime known as swatting.
On November 8, for instance, local police in West Covina, California, received an emergency call purporting to come from a minor child reporting that her parents had been drinking and shooting guns inside the minor’s home. When police arrived at the residence, Nelson allegedly accessed the residence’s Ring doorbell and used it to verbally threaten and taunt the responding officers. The indictment alleges the men helped carry out 11 similar swatting incidents during the same week, occurring in Flat Rock, Michigan; Redding, California; Billings, Montana; Decatur, Georgia; Chesapeake, Virginia; Rosenberg, Texas; Oxnard, California; Darien, Illinois; Huntsville, Alabama; North Port, Florida; and Katy, Texas.
“Enhance Speech” uses AI to make noisy podcast recordings sound like professional audio.
Enlarge / Adobe's Enhance Speech service can remove background noise from certain voice recordings. (credit: Adobe)
Recently, Adobe released a free AI-powered audio processing tool that can enhance some poor-quality voice recordings by removing background noise and making the voice sound stronger. When it works, the result sounds like a recording made in a professional sound booth with a high-quality microphone.
The new tool, called Enhance Speech, originated as part of an AI research project called Project Shasta. Recently, Adobe rebranded Project Shasta to Adobe Podcast.
Using Enhance Speech is free, but it requires creating an Adobe account and works best with a desktop web browser. Once registered, users can upload an MP3 or WAV file up to one hour long or 1GB in size. After several minutes, you can listen to the result in your browser or download the resulting cleaned-up audio.
“Enhance Speech” uses AI to make noisy podcast recordings sound like professional audio.
Enlarge / Adobe's Enhance Speech service can remove background noise from certain voice recordings. (credit: Adobe)
Recently, Adobe released a free AI-powered audio processing tool that can enhance some poor-quality voice recordings by removing background noise and making the voice sound stronger. When it works, the result sounds like a recording made in a professional sound booth with a high-quality microphone.
The new tool, called Enhance Speech, originated as part of an AI research project called Project Shasta. Recently, Adobe rebranded Project Shasta to Adobe Podcast.
Using Enhance Speech is free, but it requires creating an Adobe account and works best with a desktop web browser. Once registered, users can upload an MP3 or WAV file up to one hour long or 1GB in size. After several minutes, you can listen to the result in your browser or download the resulting cleaned-up audio.
Energie und Klima – kompakt: Deutschlands LNG-Hunger treibt die Preise. Das ist nicht nur schlecht für die ärmeren Ländern, sondern auch fürs Klima. Warum die Importe aus den USA zu hohen Extra-Treibhausgasemissionen führen.
Past maps of “high-risk” neighborhoods shape present power planet emissions.
Enlarge (credit: Silvia Otte)
In the US, it's well-documented that poor neighborhoods are likely to suffer from higher pollution levels. Sources of pollution, like power plants and freeways, are more likely to be located in poor neighborhoods. The ensuing pollution adds to the economic burdens faced by these neighborhoods, with increased medical costs, productivity lost due to illness, and premature deaths.
Since minorities and immigrants tend to live in lower-income neighborhoods, this also adds to the racial disparities present in the US. Now, a group of public health researchers has found another factor that contributed to this disparity. The historic practice of "redlining," or assigning high-risk scores to mortgages in minority neighborhoods, is also associated with higher power plant emissions, reinforcing the challenges minorities face in the US.
The term redlining is derived from a federal program, started in the New Deal, that was intended to expand access to mortgages and boost home ownership in the US. The organization that oversaw the program, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, set standards for loans that focused on four categories of risk scores, evaluated by neighborhood. The highest risk category was identified on maps with a red line, leading to its name. It was much harder to obtain mortgages in these neighborhoods, which depressed housing prices for their residents.
Past maps of “high-risk” neighborhoods shape present power planet emissions.
Enlarge (credit: Silvia Otte)
In the US, it's well-documented that poor neighborhoods are likely to suffer from higher pollution levels. Sources of pollution, like power plants and freeways, are more likely to be located in poor neighborhoods. The ensuing pollution adds to the economic burdens faced by these neighborhoods, with increased medical costs, productivity lost due to illness, and premature deaths.
Since minorities and immigrants tend to live in lower-income neighborhoods, this also adds to the racial disparities present in the US. Now, a group of public health researchers has found another factor that contributed to this disparity. The historic practice of "redlining," or assigning high-risk scores to mortgages in minority neighborhoods, is also associated with higher power plant emissions, reinforcing the challenges minorities face in the US.
The term redlining is derived from a federal program, started in the New Deal, that was intended to expand access to mortgages and boost home ownership in the US. The organization that oversaw the program, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, set standards for loans that focused on four categories of risk scores, evaluated by neighborhood. The highest risk category was identified on maps with a red line, leading to its name. It was much harder to obtain mortgages in these neighborhoods, which depressed housing prices for their residents.
The UK Government’s Intellectual Property Office published new piracy guidance today, and it contains a small, easily missed detail. People who share their Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Disney+ passwords are violators of copyright law. And it gets worse. The IPO informs TorrentFreak that password sharing could also mean criminal liability for fraud.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Following a limited launch in 2007 with just 1,000 titles, Neflix now carries more than 6,600 movies and TV shows for the enjoyment of more than 223 million subscribers.
There’s little doubt that Netflix password sharing contributed to the company’s growth and by publicly condoning it, the practice was completely normalized – globally.
The message was clear – Netflix loves you, you love Netflix, and now all your friends love Netflix too. Thanks for sharing.
Netflix and similar streaming platforms, including Amazon Prime and Disney+, still want you to love them, but password sharing? Not so much.
Five years after Netflix’s now-infamous tweet, the ground is shifting. For the first time in its history, Netflix subscription numbers decreased earlier this year and competition from rivals Amazon Prime, Disney+, HBO and dozens of others is fierce.
In the background and across the entire industry, ‘password sharing’ is receiving a reverse makeover. Nobody loves today’s ‘password piracy’ and within the ACE anti-piracy coalition, which includes all of the streaming services mentioned above, the situation is no different.
Given the obvious sensitivities, ACE publicly prefers “unauthorized password sharing” as a descriptor and elsewhere the phrase “without permission” is in common use. In Denmark, anti-piracy group Rights Alliance describes password sharing as “not allowed” but this summer there was a small but significant step forward.
“The extent of password sharing among Danes is therefore alarmingly high and eventually on a par with other forms of illegal consumption of content,” the group said.
Since password sharing is almost always a violation of streaming services’ terms of service, observers have tended to paint it as such. The general tone is that password sharing is not illegal per se but Netflix & Co. aren’t particularly fond of it anymore.
In a low-key announcement today, the UK Government’s Intellectual Property Office announced a new campaign in partnership with Meta, aiming to help people avoid piracy and counterfeit goods online.
Other than in the headline, there is zero mention of Meta in the accompanying advice, and almost no advice that hasn’t been issued before. But then this appears:
TorrentFreak immediately contacted the Intellectual Property Office for clarification on the legal side, particularly since password sharing sits under a piracy heading.
The IPO’s response was uncompromising, to put it mildly.
Fraud has been the key charge in several big UK piracy cases over the last few years, despite the key offenses having a direct link to copyright law. Fraud is a criminal offense in the UK and a conviction could easily prevent or even end a career. On a ‘being reasonable’ basis, we ruled fraud out.
According to the IPO, nothing can be ruled out.
“There are a range of provisions in criminal and civil law which may be applicable in the case of password sharing where the intent is to allow a user to access copyright protected works without payment,” the IPO informs TorrentFreak.
“These provisions may include breach of contractual terms, fraud or secondary copyright infringement depending on the circumstances.”
Given that using the “services of a members’ club without paying and without being a member” is cited as an example of fraud in the UK, the bar for criminality is set very low, unless the Crown Prosecution Service decides otherwise, of course.
A subscription streaming service pursuing a password-sharing subscriber for fraud might present itself as a legal option, but a PR disaster is never a commercial option, especially when password sharing could be ended today using technical means. So what else is on the table?
Other options mentioned by the IPO are directly linked to contract law and licensing, both of which govern subscriber behavior. So-called ‘terms of service’ are part of the agreement when people subscribe to a streaming service like Netflix.
Of course, few people read every term in detail (including when the terms are varied via email) but Netflix’s agreement document grants specific rights to the subscriber under contract and copyright law, neither of which allows password sharing beyond specified limits.
It’s of some interest that sharing a password can be described as “unauthorized” or “not allowed” by anti-piracy groups and rightsholders yet be considered a serious criminal offense under existing law. Either way, the Intellectual Property Office didn’t label password sharing illegal and a potential crime for no reason.
Overall, deterrence seems to be the goal here. Criminalizing tens of thousands of people is a self-inflicted headache the UK doesn’t need and in practical terms, couldn’t begin to cope with.
If streaming services really wanted to stop password sharing, they already have the means to do so. Whether they have the will is another matter.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
$349 peripheral uses its own CPU and GPU to power the show.
Enlarge (credit: Finalmouse/YouTube)
If you think RGB LEDs dancing upon your keyboard's keys is distracting, you might want to look away from Finalmouse's upcoming mechanical keyboard. The Finalmouse Centerpiece announced Saturday is a mechanical keyboard that has its own display showing animated visuals through the keyboard's transparent keycaps and switches for a look that seems as dazzling as it is distracting.
Finalmouse is known for making PC mice with detailed designs and, often, limited availability. It typically goes after PC gamers looking for something unique and exclusive-feeling for their setup. Now, Finalmouse is announcing its first keyboard, which takes detailed design to a new level.
Finalmouse hasn't shared many details on the display running underneath the Centerpiece's switches. We don't know its exact size, brightness, resolution, or refresh rate, for example. However, the screen is said to be powered by "interactive skins" using Unreal Engine 5. It's unclear how many skins the Centerpiece will launch with, but in its video, Finalmouse showed a variety of possibilities, from swimming koi fish that scurry away when you press a key, to a rippling water effect, a lion grazing, and 3D animations.
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